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Tom Wolfe dies at 88

Tom Wolfe, the innovative journalist and author who wrote such best-selling masterpieces as “The Bonfire of the Vanities” and “The Right Stuff” has passed away.

Wolfe, 88, had been hospitalized with an infection and died Monday, according to his agent Lynn Nesbit.

Wolfe started as a reporter at the Springfield (Massachusetts) Union before moving onto the Washington Post. He moved to New York in 1962 to join the New York Herald-Tribune and remained in the city for the rest of his life.

He was known as a pioneer of a literary style in nonfiction that became known as New Journalism. It was a long-form of writing in which writers deeply immersed themselves in the subject they were writing about. The style relied on rich and detailed description that evoked a more literary style of prose than found in typical non-fiction works.

He became a leader in the field. Wolfe edited a volume of work by himself and other prominent writers of the era, including Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, George Plimpton, titled “The New Journalism.”

I'd never met Tom Wolfe when my editor at the time, Adam Bellow, sent him the manuscript of my first book. Wolfe owed me nothing and got grief for his endorsement (as he later told me, with no regret and much amusement). It was one of the highlights of my career. pic.twitter.com/MZ0jLrtKY6